Sort of Beautiful
by Peres
Summary: There is a future to be had, and it is sort of... beautiful.


**So: a happy and somewhat belated Valentine's Day to Loquacious Quark, who won my giveaway on tumblr and asked for something Fenris/Hawke and romantic/aromantic/romantic and bungled. I have no idea whether this qualifies, but I hope you enjoy it anyway, dear lady!**

**Another note: I chose Iphigenia as the name of Fenris and Varania's mother, because it fitted culturally and I vaguely remembered that there was something about sacrifice in her story. Then I checked on Wikipedia, and also turned up that her name was translated as : "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring". Which was perfect. Iphigenia, it seems to me, would contract to either 'Iffy' or 'Genny'.**

* * *

Rainy had the best family in the world. It was the biggest too. She counted them on her fingers once and forgot how many hands she'd used. Tamlen said his was bigger, because his gramma had birthed five babies and Rainy's had only had four, but since Tamlen's gramma was Rainy's Aunty Merrill, they were all part of her family anyway.

She tried to list them again, scratching numbers in the farmyard dirt, just so she could say she knew how many there were. Great-gramma Iffy came first, and Rainy was just old enough to remember her big green eyes, her pretty ears and the way she spoke funny. Great-gramma Iffy was Granda's mama, of course, and she was Great-aunty's too. She had the same name as Great-aunty, Varania, but that was too long for everyday, so Great-aunty was Great-aunty and she was Rainy.

So, Great-gramma and Great-aunty and Granda and Gramma, of course, that was four, and Grammy and Grandy made six. Then Mama and Papa, who were called Bethany and Wesley, and Mama's brothers Unca Carver, Unca Malcom and Unca Leander, and Papa's sisters and his brothers...

Rainy looked at the fifteen strokes in the dirt and gave up. She could count higher, of course, she could count really high, but she had so many cousins and she hadn't even started on the aunties and uncas who were Gramma and Granda's friends and their children who were also her cousins and it was going to take hours and hours to count them all –

"What are you still doing out here, bratlet?"

"Unca Varric!" Rainy jumped up to hug him. Unca Varric was her favourite. He was all fuzzy and he knew the most stories. And he gave great hugs – not as good as her parents or her grandparents, but better than Aunty Merrill, because she was small and Rainy was always worried she'd hug her into two pieces. "Are you going to tell us a story?"

"Don't I always? Is everyone here?"

"Almost. Aunty Orana's going to have another baby, and Unca Feynriel's with her, of course, and Aunty Isabela is in Antiva somewhere with Aunty Lellie, and Aunty Adaia and Unca Leto took Donny and Genny and Andy off to visit Aunty Arian with the Wardens... Is Aunty Khamsin and Barty and Bianca here?"

"I wouldn't come without them, Rainy." He rumpled her hair. "And Aunty Khamsin and I are going to stay. My old bones aren't up to travelling, and even Aunty Bianca's getting a little tired of life on the road."

Rainy frowned. He didn't have the pretty crossbow on his back, and Unca Varric didn't go anywhere without Aunty Bianca. Granda said he had two wives, Aunty Khamsin and Aunty Bianca, but Rainy thought that was silly. You couldn't marry a crossbow, not even one as pretty as Aunty Bianca. She tugged on Unca Varric's hand. "C'mon, I want to hear the story about Gramma and the time she collected pants and you make it funniest."

When everyone in the family got together, there were lots of stories and hugs and food and laughter and games of chase and blindman's bluff and mages and templars and staying up late and quarrels and lessons and someone was always in the outhouse which smelled worse than usual with so many people in it, and she didn't really like the way Tamlen bossed her around just because he had pointy ears like Granda and she had round ones like Gramma...

... but she loved the stories. The ones about Gramma and Granda were the best, especially when they had Grandy and Grammy in them too, but the aunties' and uncas' stories were good too, and last year Rainy had even told one about the lizard in the stone wall who was actually King Maric transformed by the wicked Witch of the Waste until he apologised for calling her old, which he couldn't do because lizards couldn't speak, and everyone had laughed and applauded and Unca Varric had said he'd have to take her as an apprentice when she got a little bigger.

Granda was the only one who didn't tell stories. Rainy thought it might have something to do with the funny marks on his skin – he was the only one who had them and they were magic. Bad magic, although Rainy wasn't sure how magic could be bad. Gramma had magic, and Great-aunty, and Aunty Merrill and Unca Feynriel and... well, a lot of her cousins. And once Genny had almost burned the barn down, but nobody got hurt, not even the cows, and that couldn't be bad magic, because it wasn't at all like Granda's white lines.

Unless they were magic fire that had burnt all the stories out of his throat... and that would be sad, because Rainy could see Granda had a lot of stories. They were lurking behind his eyes.

She jumped over Gamlen, who was sitting in the doorway like always and went to give Granda and Gramma hugs, and then Mama and Papa. Then she gave Grandy a hug and pulled his whiskers the way he liked, and Grammy threatened to arrest her and throw her in jail unless she got a hug too, which she could do because she used to be Guard-Captain a long time ago, but she wouldn't because she was nice and Rainy was too young to be arrested and she was only joking anyway. Then Rainy had to hug everyone else, so they didn't feel left out, and argue out the usual scuffle about who got to sit in whose lap.

She ended up in Granda's lap, which was nice because she loved Granda hard, and his voice rumbled against her side in a funny way, but it was like sitting on a bunch of sticks because he was thin and a bit creaky. But she hugged him again, and kissed his nose and made him laugh until Gramma, with Izzy on her lap, poked him in the shoulder and said "Pipe down, you two."

"Hawke," Granda said, which was what he called Gramma, and he always said it just like that, all soft and surprised like somebody had given him a present. And then Gramma smiled at him and Granda smiled at her until Unca Varric cleared his throat.

"Need a moment, Broody?" which was what he called Granda, even though Granda's name was mostly Fenris and a little bit Leto, but Unca Varric liked making up names for people the same way he liked making up stories about them. Maybe it was the same thing for him and he just liked making stuff up.

"No, no," Gramma laughed. "Who wants to start?"

"I think it's Papa's turn, isn't it?" Mama asked, and her eyes laughed like they did when she was teasing.

Granda's arms tightened around her suddenly, and then he said, "Very well," and everyone went very, very quiet. He didn't look at them, like most people did when they told stories, and although he was still hugging Rainy hard she sort of thought he'd forgotten about her, because of the way he was looking at Gramma.

"Sixty years, Hawke. Do you remember?"

Gramma laughed, sort of breathlessly, like people did when something wasn't funny but it still made them happy. "You think I could forget?"

"You're not telling it properly," Rainy told him. It was nice that Granda was telling a story, but he should do it properly. "You have to start with 'Once upon a time'."

"How careless of me," Granda said, still smiling at Gramma. "Well, then. Once upon a time, in a land of dark magic, there was an elf named Leto. He was a slave, like his mother Iphigenia and his sister Varania."

That was Great-gramma's proper name, but Rainy could never remember it properly, and Leto was Granda's other name, so it was a story about him! Rainy wriggled happily. She liked stories about Granda and Gramma, and Gramma would come into the story soon, of course, because you couldn't talk about Granda without talking about Gramma as well, it just didn't work.

"Leto didn't want to be a slave," Granda said, "but even less did he relish the idea of his mother and sister being slaves all their lives," and then he did look away from Gramma, and Great-aunty had Izzy on her lap and was smiling at him.

Great-aunty didn't smile very much and she disapproved of a lot of things, but she was Rainy's favourite because they had the same name and the same red hair. Rainy had once overheard Aunty Isabela telling Great-aunty a good root would fix everything that was wrong with her, and Great-aunty saying in a cold kind of voice that she had no intention of letting anyone touch her. It confused Rainy a lot, and she didn't want Great-aunty to be cold or wrong, so she went and dug up the potato patch (she'd gotten into trouble for that later) and found the best potato to give to Great-aunty, since potatoes were the nicest root Rainy could think of. Then she remembered that when people said something was wrong with you, they usually meant you were sick, so maybe that meant elfroot instead of potato, and she took some of that to Great-aunty as well. And Great-aunty had laughed, and hugged her, and Rainy had hugged her back, like maybe hugs didn't count as touching. That was confusing, but adults were like that sometimes.

"So he made a deal with a magister. The magister would let his family go free, and Leto would be his slave. And then he cut lines in Leto's skin and filled them with lyrium, and it hurt so much that Leto forgot everything. He forgot his name, he forgot his family and he forgot that he didn't like being a slave."

Rainy shivered. Granda had forgotten Great-gramma Iffy and Great-aunty? But family was so important, family was everything... if she ever forgot Mama and Papa and Grammy and Grandy and Izzy and Tamlen and everyone... no, she wouldn't forget. There were too many people to forget, and anyway, if she did, they'd all come looking for her, and Gramma and Great-aunty would fix her head so that she remembered again. But if magic could make you forget your family, then magic could be really, really bad.

Granda kissed the top of her head and she stopped shivering, because he wouldn't let anyone magic her memory away in the first place. "The magister was cruel, and Fenris –that was what the magister called him, his 'little wolf' – learned to hate him. Eventually he ran away."

"Why didn't Fenris just kill him?" Tamlen asked. Rainy frowned at him: interrupting a story was rude and Tamlen was really bloodthirsty sometimes. Mama said he'd grow out of it, but it made Aunty Merrill and Aunty Marethari worry.

Granda didn't say anything, and then he did. He said, "Because he had been a slave too long. He did not think of it – and even if he had, the magister was stronger than him."

Tamlen pulled a face. Rainy shook her head at him, and he stuck out his tongue at her. He could be really rude.

"So he ran," Granda said, and he was looking at Gramma again. "The magister sent men after him, but those he could outrun or kill. He ran for a long time, and eventually he came to a city called Kirkwall. He had heard that the magister had left a box there, and that it had records that might help him find his family. The magister was there, too, and he thought that if he had some help, he could kill the magister and then he wouldn't need to run any more. He could just find his family and go home." Granda coughed a bit, which he did sometimes, and sometimes it made Gramma look worried, so Rainy grabbed his cup with the nasty red stuff in it for him. Granda took a little drink and then put it back down. "So he asked a dwarf named Anso to find some people to help him, and when they went to get the box, Fenris followed them."

Anso! This was the story of how Gramma and Granda had met, and she loved it a lot, even if the story about how Grandy and Grammy had kissed for the first time was funnier. And this was even better because she'd heard Unca Varric tell it, and Great-Unca Carver (who went under the ground to kill darkspawn and keep them all safe and was too busy to come back up again, which made Gramma sad sometimes), and Grammy and Gramma had both told it, but this was Granda telling it and that made it special.

"The box was empty," Granda said, "as any magister's promise, meant as bait to trap Fenris. Instead it trapped the helpful people, but since they were very skilled, they killed the magister's men. And then Fenris stepped out of the shadows to apologise for leading them into a trap, and to ask for his help. There were four of them: a tall human man, a dwarf with a crossbow, a human woman with a templar's shield, and another, shorter woman vomiting in a corner."

"Fenris, you _bastard,"_ Gramma said, and that was a bad name, but Gramma was allowed to say it because she was Gramma. And she was grinning very hard. "Nobody's mentioned that in years – I thought I'd finally lived it down."

Granda's eyes were laughing. "And the man said, 'Maker's breath, Toadface, a year with the Red Iron and you still can't handle a bit of blood?' and the woman, who did indeed have a face somewhat like a toad, since it was almost green, groaned, 'It's a different matter when you have to shed it, Carver, shut up,' and then vomited again."

Unca Varric was laughing properly. "It's one of those little, unheroic details that a professional omits, Broody."

"Nevertheless it amused me," Granda said. "They had slain over a dozen men, and yet she was not hardened to combat."

"Talk about bad first impressions," Gramma muttered.

"Even stranger; the others, who were not so affected by the sight of blood, seemed to defer to her as a leader."

Granda didn't seem to mind interruptions as much as Unca Varric, and Rainy was very curious, so she tugged his sleeve and asked, "Did you think Gramma was pretty, when you first met her?"

"No," Granda said, and Gramma laughed, and Unca Varric laughed, and Rainy felt a bit disappointed. "She was human, and she had bits of blood in her hair, and she smelled of vomit. But her voice was not displeasing, and in any case, I was more worried about killing the magister than looking at women, pretty or otherwise."

"But you think she's pretty now?" Rainy insisted.

"No," Granda said again, and Unca Varric laughed harder, and Gramma grinned and shook her head at him. "No, your gramma is not pretty."

Gramma made the toad face, with her eyes all big and her mouth wide with no lips, and croaked at them, and everyone laughed, even Great-aunty.

"Especially not at the moment," Granda said, and made them laugh harder. Eventually they stopped laughing, and Granda said, "Your gramma is so much more than pretty, Rainy. She is kind, she is clever, she is often silly, and she was not given a pretty face, but she is beautiful."

"_Fenris_," Gramma said, and everyone was quiet because she was sort of shining at him, and he was shining back.

Then Unca Varric said, "I'd tell you two to get a room, but I've seen where that leads," and pointed at all the family, which didn't make sense to Rainy but seemed to be like the sort of thing that Aunty Isabela always said. She never understood anything that Aunty Isabela said, but she liked her anyway.

Then Granda went on with his story, telling them about how he and Gramma made friends with each other and helped each other in lots of bad places. Gramma had stopped throwing up after fights, which was good because they got into lots of fights back then, and Granda started to see how she was beautiful even if she wasn't pretty, and he'd gone to her house and kissed her.

And she had kissed him back, and he had got frightened because of the magister and he'd run away from her, which made her sad. But even when he was frightened and she was sad, they kept on being together and helping each other, and then one day they killed the magister dead. And Granda had said that he was sorry for making her sad, and Gramma had kissed him, and then they were in love.

Tamlen made bad faces at the bits about kissing, but Rainy thought it was interesting. Anyway, she was growing up and one day she'd maybe kiss a boy, and so she paid attention in case Granda said something she might need to know later.

And then something had happened to Kirkwall – "that's another story, bratlets," Unca Varric said – so they'd left, and then Great-aunty had come back with Great-gramma Iffy just as the babies had started to come and they were all very happy. Rainy liked that bit. And some of the family lived in other places, because there were too many of them just for the farm, but they all came back every five years to share stories on the night that Gramma had met Granda.

It was a very long story, and by the time Granda kissed Rainy and said "and we are all living happily ever after," it was too late to start another one. So everyone hugged and Rainy went up to sleep in the hayloft with all the cousins who were around her age.

Rainy liked sleeping in the hayloft because it was warm and it smelled nice. Besides, you could talk as long as you wanted without the adults telling you to go to sleep, and she and Izzy always planned to stay awake all night, but neither of them had managed it yet.

"Yuck!" Tamlen said. He was looking out through one of the holes, and all the cousin crowded around him or found their own hole to look out of. Barty made a puking noise.

The moon was full tonight, so the light was all silvery and pretty, especially on Granda and Gramma. They both had white hair, and the moonlight made it look like it was shimmering. Gramma's back was against the wall of the house, and Granda was standing against her as they kissed each other, mouths all big and making soft breathless noises that Rainy could just hear from the hayloft.

Granda stopped kissing to take a deep breath, and Gramma smiled at him. "I was going to be offended at you for digging up that little bit of that past."

"And what has saved me from Hawke's famous wrath?" His thumb was stroking over Gramma's cheek, its white marks flashing in the moonlight.

"It was going to be high dudgeon, actually, with added hauteur. You wouldn't have survived it," and Gramma pulled her hands through Granda's hair, making it all ruffly. "But then I remembered how much time being cross with you wastes. I don't want to miss a moment, Fenris."

"Hmmm," Granda laughed a little, deep in his throat. "Hawke..." and he dropped his head to her shoulder, like he was sad, but he didn't sound sad, just muffled. "When I said... that if there was a future to be had, I would walk into it gladly by your side..."

"I hope you haven't changed your mind on that one," Gramma said, her voice all soft. "It might be a little late."

"No. Never. But this... I could not have imagined all this. To grow _old_ with you..."

"It keeps surprising me, too-"

"It is... so much." And Granda raised his head and started kissing Gramma again, slower and softer, and Tamlen said "_Gross_!"

Granda groaned, "Hawke, I believe we have an audience," and Granda and Gramma looked up at the loft. They couldn't see in the peepholes, not from down there, but they knew they were there and they could definitely hear Tamlen and Barty and Izzy giggling.

"Go to sleep, my babies," Gramma said, "and you won't see me kissing Granda again."

"Good advice," Granda chimed in, and tugged Gramma towards him. Tamlen shrieked and hid himself under his blankie, and Barty started wrestling him for it, but Rainy kept watching.

There was something like wonder in Granda's eyes, all big and dark in the moonlight, as Gramma said she loved him and Granda said something back in that funny language he and Great-gramma and Great-aunty spoke. It made Gramma's smile bigger, and then they kissed each other.

It wasn't gross at all, Rainy decided. It was sort of... beautiful.


End file.
